Law Student Has Not Learned Not to Steal

Law student by day, cat burglar by night. A judge in Australia has sentenced Phillip Ryan See, 27, to over four years in jail for robbing 43 homes in the suburbs of Sydney, where he was also studying for a masters' degree in law. See, who had previously worked as a legal assistant in a government law office, and didn't learn not to steal there, either, would rob the houses and then call a taxi to carry the loot home.

Evidently Sydney cab drivers do not ask questions about why a plasma TV is being loaded into the trunk of a cab in the middle of the night. Police did not catch See until he was discovered by a homeowner during a midnight burglary, but they apprehended him while he was fleeing the scene of that crime, again in a taxi. A stolen police uniform was among the $80,000 worth of items that police found during a search of See's apartment.

The relatively light sentence for the 43 burglaries appears to have been because the judge accepted See's argument that he had a psychotic disorder, the kind that makes you steal plasma televisions, computers and jewelry. So maybe Mr. See does have a future in the law, even if he will be taking correspondence courses for the next few years.